Pleasant Hope
by Acid and Sinick
Summary: Snarry AU: In Pleasant Hope, Missouri, Pastor Severus Snape survives from day to day, until a restless youth called Harry teaches him that life is worth living.
1. Genesis

**Part 1: Genesis**

* * *

"_And now for a brief public service announcement. Alligators. Can they kill your children? Yes."_

_-Welcome to Night Vale_

* * *

The roads in central Missouri are as long and uneventful as a lonely life. The rise and fall of loose wire dangling between telephone poles is as endless as the waves. If you stare too long, let that sagging wire mesmerize you into blinking, it can make you overlook the town altogether. But if you glance back quick enough, you might still spot the water tower, sticking up out of the straw-yellow fields. Quick, right there! Or you'll miss the only break in the flatness for hours.

Not that there's much else to miss out on, in the town called Pleasant Hope. Just a handful of houses corralled along a stretch of perfectly ordinary, solitary street. One teeth-rattling pothole later, and the town's gone, sinking into a sea of corn and soybean bisected by an occasional country road, narrow and dusty. At the turn of one such road, past the small cemetery, sits a wooden church with a white painted steeple.

Pastor Snape lives here, in his small shed-sized dwelling out back. Year after year, he tolerates the screeching gaggle of Sunday school brats who are far more teeth-grindingly loud now than they ever were during their baptisms. He puts his back into shoveling the snow off the driveway on winter mornings before funeral services. He sweeps the aisles free of rice after a rare spring wedding, scrubs grease from the plates after church dinners, and leads prayers and processions, all with measured grace and somberness and sobriety.

As jobs go, it's not too trying: just enough for one man, to keep the scant, three-digits-and-dwindling population from sinking too far into idleness or TV-induced stupor on a Sunday. One man's all a town this small needs, to tell them to keep their gazes firmly planted on the ground at their feet, and to remind them not to send their thoughts wandering too far, searching blearily, miserably past the heavens. (If there's one lesson Pastor Snape has learned, it's that pondering the theological mysteries of the world too closely can only lead into trouble.)

One might say the Pastor is a sensible man of the cloth, if not a particularly pleasant or hopeful one.

On Mondays - when all the psalm books are tucked away in the narrow shelves behind each pew, and the pews themselves are empty of even the most dedicated stragglers; when the stained glass window spills low, slanting rays from the setting sun - Pastor Snape takes one last look around the church and locks up. He walks back to his cottage alone, and settles down to a late evening between himself and the Lord, though He's never been keen on joining in so far. So Pastor Snape sits alone in his tiny kitchen and treats himself to a nip of something far stronger than sacramental wine.

He lets his drink warm its way down his throat, and he breathes in the stillness. All is quiet. All is well.

In the evening hush, unbroken by any tell-tale crunch of driveway gravel under car tires, the sudden rattle of the locked doorknob is as startling as a tornado warning past the end of the season. Pastor Snape jolts, shoves greasy hair out of his eyes, and heads for the door. The Lord's work is, apparently, never done. But Snape's well used to thankless tasks by now: someone has to be.

He unlocks and opens the door and pauses in the doorway, sweeping the yard with an unimpressed glare which comes to rest on the figure sitting on the porch stairs, head-down and huddled into the gloom.

"Hello," Snape says quietly, lifting his fingertip from the porch light switch. He doesn't turn the light on or approach any closer. It wouldn't do to frighten away a late visitor, or to let them catch the scent of whiskey on him.

Suddenly remembering proper manners, the visitor yanks his baseball cap off his head, releasing a fluffy dark mop of hair falling just past his ears. "Um, hi! I, er... I thought churches are always open."

"You can come back on Wednesday or on Sunday for services. Eight AM and six PM. Sharp." As far as Pastor Snape is concerned, there are four types of people in this world that usually find their way into his parish: scholars, sowers, survivors...

Seekers.

It's painfully clear which type the boy belongs to: fearless, thoughtless and troublesome.

The visitor's head lifts. Wide green eyes flash behind round glasses, and his throat moves as he swallows. "How do you know God even exists?"

_Seekers always think they're unique. This one is pure stubbornness and sass, _Snape thinks, _self-absorbed enough not to bother looking at the hours posted on the church door._

Snape takes a deep breath and rids himself of the irritation that's tightened his chest, exhaling it in a slow, outwardly serene sigh. Far better that, than giving in to his first impulse and snapping 'I don't _know. No-one_ knows!' Instead, he remains silent, with the grim, gritted patience of someone who's been stuck in this world doing godly duties for long enough to know that there's no point in complaining about Greater Truths, or complaining about their absence.

"Er, sorry," the boy adds when the silence has gone on just a bit too long, "M'not usually here. You probably don't remember me." He rubs his hand against his flannel shirt and sticks out an open palm. "I'm Harry."

"I know." Snape makes no move to take the offered hand; instead he folds his arms in a deliberately forbidding gesture. _Lily Evans' boy_. His lips thin. "It's much too late to be on my porch," he declares firmly. When the boy doesn't take the hint, he snaps "Go home!"

At least that brings the boy to his feet and sends him backpedaling away, down the porch steps until he's standing in the front yard staring up at him.

Years before Snape began to wear collars stiff and starched with the ever-present white square, Lily Evans and Severus Snape were in the same graduating class. Though at one time Severus thought he wouldn't live long past drinking age, it's Lily who's gone now, leaving only a stone in the town cemetery to remember her by.

And a son.

The tragic irony of life still stings, even after all these years. And Snape's not the only one stung by it.

"You are welcome to come back this Sunday," Snape declares before the boy runs too far across the gravel driveway, but even as he makes the offer he knows that Harry won't be there. Seekers aren't the type to bend easily to anyone's will. They're the type most likely to question, to leave their heads unbowed during the communal prayer, to open their eyes, seek out Snape's gaze and hold it in mute challenge: so sure in their self worth, in their assumptions about the world and about Snape himself.

Snape always makes a point of looking away. He's not about to let other people's assumptions define him. ...At least not any more than they already have.

He watches from the porch steps as the boy trudges silently off, along the highway to town. The dwindling crunch of his footsteps is the only sound, apart from the cicada chorus and the fluttering moths and the county sheriff's cruiser driving by.

* * *

The next morning, Snape takes the short walk out to the cemetery. He spends a few minutes staring at Lily Evans' stone. It's a small granite block, smooth as an unwritten book's pages. He bends to brush away a few dry leaves covering Lily's last name.

It's only as he finds himself looking down at the date of death that the realisation hits Snape._ She's been gone almost two decades. And I'm still here._ The stone must have been recently cared for; it's cleaner than most others. It's so strange to think that the last hand to touch it would have been her son's.


	2. Corinthians

**Corinthians**

* * *

_"Close your eyes. Let my words wash over you. You are safe now."_

_- Welcome to Night Vale_

* * *

The next time Snape sees Lily Evans' son in his church. It's not on a Sunday. It's Friday evening, and most young men that age are speeding down the road with their radios blasting some defiant drivel, probably on their way to sneak into bars or brothels, or worse. And yet, here the brat is. Pale and dark-haired, but those bright eyes, that slight smile, make him look startlingly, achingly like a black-and-white yearbook picture of Lily. Someone that vivid would hardly talk to something as wooden as a cross on the wall, so Snape stays in the same room, offering mute company.

"It's OK, you know..." Eyes as green as the carefully watered church lawn meet Snape's, and for a second, in the stained-glass light, it almost seems like Lily's son is about to add something deep and meaningful and transcendent.

The moment passes, and the boy slouches, his hands joined over parted knees, clasped hard enough so his knuckles are white. "...you don't need to watch me," he continues in a defiant mumble, "I won't steal anything."

_As if I'd let him stay if he looked any less of an innocent. _

Snape stays still, stays near, and waits for the right moment to move closer. It's much like tending to the feral cats out in the shed: all about persuading them to believe again, bit by bit, that no harm will come to them within these walls.

Harry's gaze travels along the empty aisle, back and forth across the pews. "I probably shouldn't even be here." He shrugs and huffs, as if admitting a weakness. "I don't really pray."

It's Snape's cue to sit down on the same pew as the boy, back straight, shoulders firm against the stiff wooden seat, leaving a safe arm's length of distance.

The boy looks up at him. He shuffles and knocks his knee into the stiff back of the pew with all the clumsiness of someone who'd never been told not to fidget during service as a child. "How do _you_ pray?"

It's almost a sensible, scholarly question to ask of a pastor, but the tone of Harry's voice makes the question personal. Prying. _Seekers._ The boy's probably not being deliberately nosy, but for a brief second, Snape is caught unaware. He composes himself with a downward stare and pieces together a reasonably acceptable answer. "Use your imagination, and suppose that God exists. Then use your capacity for trust, and think of what you would want to ask Him. Then ask it. I have been told it makes many feel better."

The boy's glance sweeps up to the crucifix, then to the direction of the cemetery, as if considering the difference between them. "How would that make _anyone_ feel anything? Talking to someone who never answers back! It's pointless."

Snape bites back a far less patient growl. "Instead of pestering me, you _could_ tell Him."

"Fine," the boy closes his eyes. His glasses are smudged. His lip, bitten. This is how the boy must look like, as he deals with loss by keeping a tombstone clean. "But do I have to trust him to even talk to him?"

It's a startlingly sensible question, coming from someone so young. "What reason do you have not to?"

"Well, you know... It's just strange!" Those green eyes are suddenly shifty, the boy blinks and adjusts his glasses. "Do you think he really hates me?"

_Hates you? _Snape frowns, regarding the boy suddenly with all focus and suspicion of an adult knowing full well how bitter it feels to be a teen and an outcast. _How can anyone hate an innocent?_ "Who told you that?"

"Books, church," The boy shrugs. "Who doesn't!" His eyes cloud over as if hearing someone speak, and he winces. _He may not attend my services_, Snape thinks, _but his aunt, uncle, and cousin are here every Sunday._ He knows well the mournful squeak of his pews, under the burden of Vernon Dursley's looming presence. _Have__** I**__ done this? If so, what will it take to undo?_

"None of this is about hate," Snape says carefully. At least he hopes not, after all this time of wrestling with his own doubt. "Sometimes we may feel as if no one cares. That's not true."

"Liar. It's right there in _your_ book!" Harry snaps. "If God doesn't hate me why would he make others think I'm an -" Harry chokes and his mouth curls thinly in an expression Snape knows too well is not cruelty but pain. "-abomination?"

"You're wrong," slips past Snape's lips faster and harsher than expected. He realizes with dread that it's the worst possible thing to say.

"Forget it." Harry jumps to his feet. "This is a mistake. Sorry I bothered you."

"Wait! Harry!"

Snape reaches out, but Harry pushes past him.

The Bible in Snape's hands is knocked out of his grasp. It falls open at _Corinthians_.

"Harry?"

Pastor Snape is too old for this, certainly too old to chase after lost young men. Instead he bends to pick up his book. With yellowed fingertips he traces the part of scripture which he has never used in his sermons, but knows by heart nonetheless.

… _neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God._

When the painful verse stings his eyes and steals his breath and echoes pounding through his chest, he turns the page with a shaky hand, forces himself to inhale and release his breath in a deep sigh. _God, grant me serenity... forget courage, forget wisdom, serenity is good enough! Please let me have __**that**__!_

_How do you pray?_ the boy had asked him.

Snape huffs a pained sigh. He lowers his gaze from the crucifix to the floor at his feet and simply breathes. _Not easily. But then, nothing worthwhile in this world is easy._

* * *

There are verses in the Bible which do not speak of hate, which speak of humanity and humility, of compassion and courage. Snape speaks of them every week, he ought to know.

Next Sunday, as usual, Snape speaks the advice of King Solomon. _**Let your eyes look straight ahead, fix your gaze directly before you. Make level paths for your feet and take only ways that are firm.**_Practical, solid as ever.

On the next Sunday, he tries something new: _**Jonathan stripped himself of the robe that was on him and gave it to David, with his armor, including his sword and his bow and his belt.**_ Reading the verses feels a bit like baring a part of himself he'd rather leave hidden, but he keeps speaking, even and calm, of loyalties and values of human companionship. Of friendships and kindred souls. He speaks of brotherhood: a family chosen in spirit rather than bound by blood.

As he looks up, there are unblinking green eyes staring intently at him from a remote pew. An odd sense of warmth settles over him, almost like satisfaction.

Snape is not the most fiery speaker ever known to the faith, but the resonant bass bell of his voice reverberates through the sterile white clapboard of this chapel, captivates this small-town audience every Sunday. This is his element. He can work miracles with his voice. _Listen to me,_ he thinks. _Just listen. Trust me. Let this help you. Let __**me**__ help._

* * *

Harry used to be relieved to stay on the farm when Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia dressed Dudley in his Sunday best and disappeared for several hours. There were hogs to feed and stables to muck out and the mountain of chores seemed like a holiday without Uncle Vernon hovering over his shoulder.

But now, attending Pastor Snape's sermons is far from an inconvenience, especially if Harry picks a spot behind the Dursleys instead of next to them.

_Snape can talk! He can really, really talk!_ Hearing him reminds Harry of being eleven again, and crouched under the staircase at midnight, pressing his ear against the dying radio, just to make out the words in the transmission past the crackle of noise: distant echoes of a wider world, far beyond the town's familiar limits. Pastor Snape's voice is slow and dark like molasses, and it soothes him. It makes Harry stay and it makes him listen.

It's a game of sorts. When Harry keeps watching him. But isn't that what you're supposed to do in a church anyway, pay attention to the pastor? Nowadays, when Harry stares at Pastor Snape during prayer, even sizes him up shamelessly while every other eye is closed, Snape doesn't look away. He just speaks evenly, calmly.

_"Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven..."_

Just as his voice lulls Harry into a peaceful trance, Snape gazes right back into the mute challenge of Harry's stare, and when he has captured Harry's full attention, only then he smiles: slow and sure and triumphant, the bastard. And the moment stills, in silence. Even Snape's voice fades away and all Harry hears is the beat of blood in his ears. All he feels is the burn of a coal-dark stare and it even makes him wonder, for just a second, if Snape is staring deep enough to read his mind.

_"… lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil."_

Harry feels the traitorous heat spread from his cheeks all the way to his belly, and for the first time, breaks the stare and bows his head.

_"...For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever and ever."_

_Argh, _Harry thinks. _Stop that! Stop it right this minute. I am not __**that**__ easy to fool! Not like the rest of them around here. I don't believe whatever you say just because you read it out of a book. It's all lies anyway. We're born and then we die, and that's __**it**__! Why would I ever want otherwise? It's not like anything they say will happen to __**me**__ after I die will be __**fun!**_

But it's not really true that Harry doesn't believe in anything, not any more. Harry does believe in one thing now. Or at least he's starting to, in any case. He believes that Snape believes. Some belief apparently runs deeper than bowing your head during service and mouthing all the right verses. And Snape must have that. But how?

Harry's intrigued, and that, apparently, makes all the difference on how he chooses to spend his Sundays.

* * *

On the way back from Brighton, Snape leaves the windows down, letting the grocery bags on the back seat rattle like wind-filled sails. Three miles to Pleasant Hope, he spots the twin reflection of headlights on the glasses of a lonely hitch-hiker.

When Snape recognises the lonely figure as Harry he slams on the brakes.

The boy isn't standing idle: he's walking steadily, against the oncoming traffic. Not that there's much traffic heading back into Pleasant Hope at the moment. Snape leans out the window and calls out, "Good evening. Do you need a ride to town?"

Harry looks at him and shakes his head somberly. "No, not that way. But thanks."

Snape eyes him. Harry's school bag is slung over his shoulder. The bag's stuffed so tight the zipper won't close. One tattered sock hangs out like a panting puppy-tongue.

"Pastor Snape, do you know if there's a church, or a shelter in Brighton, or..." Harry doesn't finish the sentence. He doesn't need to. "Something that's open late."

_A young thing like that out on the streets of Brighton late at night? They'll chew him up and spit him out, glasses and all._ Snape narrows his eyes, digs in his trouser pocket for his wallet. "Do you have_ any_ cash on you?"

Harry bends down and dutifully holds up a rolled up paper cylinder, all fives and tens, looks like, then tucks it back into his left shoe. His stern glare stops Snape from even offering a fifty. Somehow he knows that the boy will not accept.

Snape sighs, and pushes the passenger door open. "Get in," he commands gruffly. "You may sleep on my couch this week."

"I have money!" Harry protests. "And I'm old enough to work! I don't need charity."

"Nonsense! You can tend to my garden as payment," Snape cuts him off. "It'll do my old knees good to save my kneeling for work instead of weeding, and it'll give _you_ some proper work to do."

Harry snorts but climbs in.

Snape eyes him suspiciously. The snort warrants an explanation.

"Your knees aren't old," Harry protests in response to Snape's stare. "No older than the rest of you, anyway! Not that the rest of you is old either! Knees and back and everything in between. I mean, it's fine! Great even!"

Snape hmphs his disbelief and plants himself further into the car seat. It wouldn't do for Harry to somehow parse sudden approval from his body language. But on the bright side, the flustered banter does seem to distract the boy enough for Snape to take him back to Pleasant Hope without further protests or offers of payment. He counts it as a small victory.

* * *

After bringing in the groceries, Snape pulls worn but clean linens out and spreads them across the couch. He gives one of his pillows to the unexpected guest. He surrenders a near-empty cupboard to the wrinkled, scrunched contents of Harry's bag.

He doesn't think of dinner until the groceries are stacked in the small refrigerator, and then he slaps together grilled cheese on toast. Snape holds out a plate with a double triangle of bread and melting cheese, gooey enough to stretch between the slices. Harry grabs the first skillet-hot slice off the offered plate and bites in, inhaling the grilled cheese sandwich with the speed and carelessness only a starving teen can achieve._ I'm an idiot,_ Snape thinks, _I should have offered him something sooner. He probably hasn't eaten since breakfast. If then._

"Um sorry," Harry looks up, timid as a stray cat, mumbling past a half-chewed slice. "I guess we were supposed say something first before the meal."

Snape smirks and quotes a particularly feisty old nun he'd met years ago. "No time. No meat. Good God, let's eat!"

Harry snorts out a mouthful of toast crumbs. "_Actual_ grace! Don't you do that? What with all the," he gestures around and toward the church next door. "You know."

"I was both graceful and genuine." Snape assures, and arches his eyebrow. "Unless you want your hand held?"

Harry's cheeks turn as pink as Snape's peony blooms out back.

Snape could almost keep up the teasing, now that he knows it works so splendidly, but instead he mentally chastises himself for teasing an innocent, hands Harry his second slice and heads off to the kitchen. There he rummages through the cupboards and fridge for a can of spam and a pair of eggs to break open onto the hot skillet.

_Naive brat,_ Snape thinks almost affectionately, _the only difference between what he believes and what I do is that I have no problem acting out of necessity, or responsibility, and he just won't stop voicing the questions others rarely have the guts or the brains to ask me._

But he doesn't say that. Harry believes in people - in good people - above everything else, and somehow he believes in _Snape_, and Snape finds himself incapable of shattering that blind, unwavering trust.


	3. Psalms

_"All hail the glow cloud!"_

_-Welcome to Night Vale_

* * *

**Psalms**

It's odd to sleep somewhere so quiet and so closed in: the room feels like an empty cellar. Harry can count on the fingers of one hand the nights he's spent away from the Dursleys' farm. The barn doesn't count as 'away' of course. That was where he spent most of his nights in the summer: in his makeshift hideaway amid the bales of hay, lying on an old horse blanket and falling asleep to the rustle of stirring livestock.

Snape's living room is small, with a leaky faucet in the kitchen just round the corner, and a creaky elm tree outside. A couch spring digs into Harry's side and he shifts away from it, throwing off the cotton sheet. Not that he really needs it; the night's warm enough. There's the distant wail of coyotes, far-off and lonely. An occasional faint hum of cars driving down faraway roads reminds him that there's more to life than this wilderness. It makes Harry miss his radio: left behind under the Dursleys' stairs, along with the rest of his childhood.

The match to the tinder that had been building for years, was the way Uncle Vernon abruptly forbade Harry to attend church anymore with the Dursleys. "What business can an abomination like you have in Church, with good, God-fearing folks? And just what sort of prank are you trying to pull, eyeing Pastor Snape the way you did! Answer me, boy! Up to no good again, are you? Well, you can forget about it: no mischief on my watch! No sir!" The smug, self-righteous look on his uncle's face was the last straw. Harry stormed out with a hastily packed bag and slammed the door behind him for good. The wide unknown stretched past the three wooden stairs was far more welcoming than the Dursleys farm ever was to him.

One thing is clear, at least: Snape doesn't believe Harry's an abomination. Maybe it's even true, and Harry's just as human as the rest of the world as far as the Bible's concerned. After all, a pastor would know the truth better than Harry's uncle.

He listens, trying to figure out if Snape's asleep or awake; but all is quiet, as if there's no one else there at all. Harry holds his breath, strains his ears even harder in the silence, tries to listen past his own heartbeat, and he thinks he hears breathing in the next room. He isn't sure if he's imagining it, but it's slow and steady and as he tries to match his own breathing to it, his mind quiets at last and his eyelids grow heavy and his thoughts dim.

At the Dursleys', Harry woke early, to feed the chickens, but there are no chickens to feed here, so he lies quietly, waiting as the early sun paints the yellowed wallpaper pink. Until he hears the creak of a bed and the sound of steady footsteps, and knows it's the start of a new day. Then he jumps up and folds up the cotton sheets, stacking them over the pillow, eager to make a good house guest impression on his first day.

* * *

After breakfast, Snape finds Harry out in the cemetery by his mother's stone. The surface is freshly cleaned and a wreath of wildflowers rests on top of the granite.

"Guess I was wrong, huh," Harry's head is lowered, his expression hidden behind that mop of hair, eyes downturned behind shielding lenses. "I told you before that it's pointless to talk to someone who doesn't answer, but that's not true." He reaches out to arrange the little spray of blossom on the stone. "I know she won't answer, but it's good to be here."

Snape is silent: the careful, cautious silence of an avid listener. It's the best way he knows to honor deep, personal loss.

"There are places in the world that _matter_. That _mean_ something. More than a dot on a map or a name. Like right here. Or right there too." He lifts his head for the first time, nods in the direction of the church and Snape's cottage alike, as a faint, reminiscent smile dawns. Only then does that vivid gaze flick to Snape's face. "Does that make any sense?"

Snape peers against sunlight at the road to Pleasant Hope. "Your home must matter to you in some way."

Harry makes a face. "It's my uncle's farm! Nowhere I'd call 'home'. They can have the place all to themselves, just like they've always wanted. It's not like I'm ever going back!"

Snape sifts through all the things he admired about Lily, trying to settle on something particularly relevant to her son. When at last Snape offers up the memory, his voice is halting, a slow murmur so quiet it barely disturbs the hush. "Your mother, she... left." Snape bows his head, turns his gaze away; giving Harry privacy, hoping the straggling strands of his hair hide his own expression. "Out of all of us, she was the one who was brave enough to actually leave town. For good. Never came back 'till they brought her body here. To rest in the family plot." _Ashes to ashes, dust to dust._

"What was she like, in school?"

_A lot like you_, Snape thinks. _A seeker. _He shakes his head and smiles, brief but honest. "She wasn't much for praying either."

_I am incredibly honored to have known her._

* * *

Sparrows scatter from the lilac bushes, dusty feathers and heart-shaped leaves all a-shiver at the victorious, diesel-smoky roar of the ancient lawnmower piloted by Snape's unexpected houseguest. Snape can't help but wonder if his tomato seedlings have all been cut to the root, sacrificed to a wandering turn of the mower going round the peony plants. He winces, worries, but doesn't look out the window. He certainly hasn't lived this long without other people making him abundantly aware of his many faults: he knows perfectly well he can be demanding. Perfectionistic. But he knows even more clearly that it won't do for Harry to think that he isn't trusted with his work, especially now, when Harry's still so uncertain of his welcome.

The smell of gasoline and freshly cut grass has filled the cottage in equal measures by the time the lawnmower suddenly goes quiet. Harry ambles in, loose-limbed with exertion, mopping his flushed face with one of Snape's old T-shirts (the one with the seminary logo, the irony!) Harry is tousled and sweaty and wearing perfectly ordinary jeans; but that bare torso, skin pink with sun, and the even sunnier smile Harry turns his way, make a picture worthy of the wondering gaze usually reserved for timeless artworks. Had Snape still been the same impressionable seminary student who'd once spent an hour staring at a chapel ceiling's timeless fresco immortalizing human skin, life and youth - he wouldn't have been able to tear his gaze away.

Harry is just as untouchable as that chapel ceiling, and Snape tells himself that it makes a bit of silent appreciation permissible: so long as it's carefully hidden, of course. He bites his lip and does_ not_ acknowledge the heat on his face as anything other than a momentary reaction to the current weather. It is, after all, rather hot for May.

He forces his hand to unclench behind his back, and passes Harry a pitcher of iced tea. Wordless, calm, Snape is the picture of restraint. (It's not as if he's rushing to offer to apply lotion to all that pink skin!) He certainly doesn't comment on the sweat beading on Harry's body. If he watches a drop slide down Harry's chest as Harry gulps down the drink, it's only for a moment. If he does momentarily consider swatting that tempting backside to send the brat to shower - alone! - it's only for the sensible and fully justifiable reason of teaching him not to clutter up Snape's kitchen with his sweat-sheened self.

"Lawn's done," Harry announces, wetting his hand under the faucet and running it through his hair. "Anything else you need?" He glances back at Snape, splashes water on his cheeks, and blinks. "What? Have I got something on my face?"

"Do you have to ask?" Snape says, casting what can pass as an assessing look. He steps forward. After a moment of deliberation, he allows himself to reach out and pluck a blade of grass from that mop of hair, right above Harry's forehead. It would be so easy, Snape thinks, for a less honorable man to lie, and use that excuse to brush Harry's face, and then let the touch linger, follow the trail of droplets of sweat, down, down, down. _Harry should really be more careful in strangers' houses. Someone with far less scruples could so easily take advantage of his trust. _

Even as Harry disappears into the shower, that blade of grass, green as Harry's gaze, still seems to weigh heavily against Snape's palm.

Every now and then, Snape's traitorous primal nature sweeps him up like a summer storm past tornado season, and when it hits with all that energy and need, even the reclusive refuge of the church's walls is no real escape. He thinks of Harry, separated from him by a thin wall, slim and supple as corn stalks in spring, face upturned toward the shower's spray the same way growing shoots face the warm summer rain.

The blade of grass in his hand is no longer than a pine needle. Snape doesn't have any excuse to hang onto it, but instead of throwing it out, he brings it to his face and inhales, catching the faint, evocative scent of summer.

* * *

They go out to Dobby's for dinner, at Harry's insistence. It's the only diner in town, unless you count the place at the gas station which offers nothing more appetizing than stale pizza slices or hot dogs off the heating rack.

At this hour, the near-empty brick-walled room is abandoned by regulars in favor of Abe's Corner - the local bar next door. The two of them are taking up a narrow booth next to the neon-yellow window sign. Snape spears spaghetti on his fork as Harry takes a sip of lemonade and lets out a teeth-grinding crunch, which means another ice cube had put up a fight and lost. He even crunches along to a tune on the radio. _Country station, as usual. Mediocre at best._ Snape prefers choral music, and not just because he's always been lead baritone in any choir he's ever sung in.

Now that Harry doesn't wolf down every edible piece, he is rather amusing company to observe. The second helping of paired meatballs in the center of his plate nests in a noodly pile spreading its saucy tentacles toward the edges. It's a masterpiece of sorts. Harry looks at Snape, leans in, sticks his nose in between the meatballs, nearly kissing his food and slurps in a stray noodle with a mischievous whistle. The tail end of it smacks him in the nostril with a splatter of tomato-red, reaching all the way up his forehead like a zigzagging flesh wound.

Snape can see the audible 'oh!' of unexpected disappointed display so clearly on that face.

"Bleargh," Harry says, licking his finger and then wiping the streak of sauce off his brow. "That's probably _so_ not what they mean when they say 'Touched by His Noodly Appendage'."

Snape sighs, bites the inside of his cheeks - the temptation is too great to go along with the game and mouth "Ramen!" - and lets out a nondescript groan instead. A priest, unfortunately, has his reputation to maintain.

"Where did you hear that?" he asks._ In this town. From whom?_

Harry shrugs. "Oh, here and there. On the net. And from my friend at the library."

"Just who is this friend?"_ It can't be Pince; that woman hasn't befriended another human being since the Great Depression!_

"She helps out there. You probably don't see her often."

_I won't see her in church, he means. Her. Not him. Certainly a young man with Harry's looks would attract enough of a female following to fill his head with empty Internet chatter. Just what else is this librarian girl teaching him between the stacks? _Snape makes it a point not to ask further questions, but he suddenly remembers that his books are due this week, so it will be his sincere pleasure to make a trip to the library and stare down his nose at the meager collection. Just for the fun of making intelligent inquiries and watching the assistant librarian squirm in exasperation at the state of the town library.

Perhaps he'll even ask for recommendations on his reading; after all Harry here seems to be receiving such _useful_ advice.

"She's great, you know. Last year, right around Homecoming, she tried to start this thing at school called a GSA - um, that's Gay-Straight Alliance."

Snape nods. He is perfectly aware of what those three letters stand for, but he lets Harry explain. The animated way Harry's hands move shows how much Harry cares about this topic.

"The Principal didn't approve, of course. Hermione got in trouble: got herself suspended for three days! But if there's one thing about her it's that she doesn't give up. Never-ever. So in those three days, she looked up all sorts of laws and rules on the web, and apparently she's right and Umbridge's wrong, and even ACLU's site says it's illegal to stop GSAs or punish her for it." Harry beams. "Her mom and dad got involved. That showed them! And we're still meeting. Twice a month, after school. In secret, for now, but it's sort of an open secret. Everyone's welcome."

Snape smiles. He can't help it, Harry's youthful enthusiasm is contagious. "Sounds like quite an adventure."

"Yeah! Hermione always has these Brilliant Ideas! Poor Ron. I can't see how he can keep up with her, I really don't."

Snape's mind carefully maps out Harry's everyday existence from his ramblings. _Ron, Hermione. Must be quite a pair... Good! Harry can do better than a bookish small town nerd. _

"What do you think of them?" Harry asks.

"Of whom?" Snape can't help but feel just a bit out of place here - out of place and time - in this Harry-dominated space and their conversation sprinkled with 'open secrets' and random 'noodly' appendages slithering off Harry's plate.

"Gay-Straight Alliances. In schools. Necessary or... just incredibly important?"

It's surreal! It really is, as if the universe turned inside out, sideways and onto itself, sharp abbreviated corners thrust through the center in complete disregard for space, for age. For order. In Snape's world, there were no GSAs. There were the bars, the baths, the closets... There was the easy societal acceptance of the seminary school. Of belonging: somewhere. Anywhere. Of being given absolution: a place and a chance to change the world.

Snape gives the thin-lipped, stubborn smile of a survivor who's fought the world since the day he was born. "Any alliance is usually a good thing." _… for someone like you, and like me. _

Outside the seminary walls there was so much left unexplored for Snape. But the death announcements in the papers discouraged exploration, as did the ignorance, the stench of stigma, the fear of ostracism, the plague that did not have a name - did not need a name spoken aloud. There was always that terror of loving someone, anyone, on the back of Snape's mind, because the mere act of love however brief, could spell death.

It's not the same nowadays, Snape knows. There is no easy solution: only the ignorant and the power-hungry tell their flock that prayer cures all ills. But there is greater awareness, there are treatments and medicine. There is a name now. He prays that Harry will never feel the crippling fear and guilt of causing death - his own or his loved ones' - simply by the physical fact of love. That Harry will never have to resign himself to a life without closeness, simply so he and anyone he ever cares about can survive a deadly plague.

_Maybe I am a coward after all, _Snape thinks. _Perhaps it comes with being a survivor._

He takes a deep, shaky breath, but knows better than to ask for serenity at a moment like this. The more trials Snape survives, the more serenity seems like an unachievable dream, fading further from his reach.


	4. Chronicles

_"I fear for anyone caught between what they know, and what they don't yet know that they don't know."_

_-Welcome to Night Vale_

* * *

**Chronicles**

* * *

The video tape rental in town has something for everyone, or so the owner assured Harry: "Unless you are expecting something new, young man!" comes the senile whisper from the owner at the checkout. The old man's cloudy eyes glisten like a rolling camera lens.

'Anything New' is apparently everything from this century which was recently released to tape, Harry realises, as he takes a look through the dusty shelves.

"Can't be too picky in Pleasant Hope," the creaky voice assures Harry. "At least we've got videos to watch!"

Harry runs his fingers over the dusty plastic boxes with the sun-bleached cardboard covers. His choices are pretty limited. "How's this one?" Harry lifts up a VHS box, not yet visibly faded by the sunlight.

The reply, when it makes its way past the wheeze of elderly lungs, is both oddly specific and weirdly imprecise. "One and a half hours. Trashy. Good with popcorn."

"Oh." Harry lets go of the box and points at the next one. "And this?"

"An hour and fifty minutes. Sentimental. Best with tissues." The man behind the counter peers at Harry. The cataracts that have partially blinded him have turned his eyes a strangely beautiful, misty silver.

Harry looks up at the somewhat-cryptic boxes on the top shelves. Most of the titles have faded far too much to be readable. Harry reaches to pull one down so he can read it. The box teeters on the thin edge of the shelf and then falls, right on the top of his head, like a light-handed whack.

"Oops. Sorry," Harry yelps and grabs the box before it knocks anything else off its shelves._ 'American Pie'. Eep. Yeah... Definitely not! _He feels his cheeks flush with embarrassment at the thought of introducing Snape to this particular movie. _Wonder if the old man here's watched all of the tapes, including this one? Or __**that**__ one! And every single one from the Adult section!_

_Scary._

"Not **that **one. Obviously," the owner sighs and fixes his unnerving gaze on his only customer as Harry awkwardly slides the offending box back on the shelf. "I haven't seen you here often. What are you looking for today?"

"Um, dunno really," Harry scratches his head. "Something good to watch. W-with a friend. Guess we'll know when we'll see it. I don't think he'd like anything sentimental. Or anything trashy," Harry adds immediately. "I think he's more... old-fashioned."

"A fine quality in an audience. Try the older releases to your left."

"Oh, ok," Harry stumbles past the dustier shelves. His gaze shifts across the boxes. _Back to the Future_, _Back to the Future II_, _Labyrinth_. He's never really planned out an evening like this for anyone, and suddenly the whole idea seems as silly as the cover of _Swamp Thing _right next to _The Return to Frogtown_.

He peers at the impressive lineup of _Star Trek_ films and suddenly, before he can change his mind, he grabs the third one, the one with blue Spock on the cover.

A glare like that is as icy as it gets. It reminds Harry a lot of Snape during his evening sermons. The stained glass window casts a strip of multicolored lights on the church floor, and when Snape passes through it and lingers, his face becomes a dual mask of red and green, a multicolored enigma.

The movie rental owner's stare lights up as Harry approaches the counter. "Interesting choice. Yes, ver-ry interesting: An hour and forty-five minutes. Slow-paced yet stirring. Best watched with a grain of salt and an appreciation for lifetime devotion." Gnarly fingers snap the plastic box shut and punch in the number in the cash register. "One ninety-eight with tax."

"Thanks." With a bit of luck, Harry fishes out a wrinkled dollar bill, three quarters, four nickels, and three cents from his left pocket. The owner sweeps the scattered coins from the counter and hands Harry the bagged tape.

"Best keep it until the weekend, young man. Enjoy your night."

* * *

Pizza from the uptown gas station is way too plain. As much as Harry likes gooey cheesy slices with a snowstorm layer of garlic-and-parmesan on top, what sort of guy would he be if he just shoved a few greasy slices at Pastor Snape instead of a proper thank you? Snape would probably lift his eyebrow at the 'offering' and dismiss him completely as a typical teen vagabond. That's _so_ not what Harry wants to look like!

So instead Harry sneaks into the kitchen just in time for Snape to start the evening sermons, and stirs spaghetti in the boiling pot, slow and even, just like Aunt Petunia always told him to do. He spoons the chunky tomato sauce out of its can with a plop and into a plastic bowl, and microwaves it diligently. To make up for all the canned'n'nuked ex-vegetable goop, Harry adds sprigs of dill and oregano, stalks of green onions, and garlic cloves white and shiny as oversized teeth; all of them as fresh as they could be, plucked quietly from Snape's herb garden just five minutes ago.

Harry sets the table in the kitchen just in time: he hears the conversations and the cars speeding off the gravel driveway of the church, and Snape walks in just a few minutes later.

"Well, that's done for the day. I didn't see you at the service..." Snape looks up and stops. "Harry?"

Harry stands at the table, basking in the sheer luck of a well-managed moment. He's in his best, newest school shirt, and he beams as he spoons out the first knotted bit of spaghetti onto a plate. "Surprise!" he points at the pair of plates and tries not to make the gesture so awkward. "Dinner. And a movie after! Want?"

It's really tough to say what Pastor Snape wants on any day, much less right now. One eyebrow lifts, but aside from that, Snape shows about as much emotion as if he's been told that the spaghetti plate is about to take his confession. Fortunately, he doesn't keep Harry guessing for long. "Starving." Snape drawls. Just like that, he takes a seat and reaches for his fork, as nonchalant as ever. After the first bite, he asks "What's the movie?"

"Ever seen Star Trek?" Harry grabs his fork, and grins over his own mouthful. "It's about aliens. And adventures in space. It's brilliant."

"I'd bet all the sacramental wine in my cupboard that you've watched it before," Snape smiles. The smile is sharp, stained with spaghetti sauce, and it makes Harry's mouth water.

"Um. Not all. Just bits and pieces, whatever's on late night TV." When the Dursleys had all gone to bed Harry used to sneak up into the living room to watch something in the dark, with the sound turned down to the barest whisper; sitting right in front of the flickering TV set in total awe at the late night features. Those episodes of _Cosmos: A Personal Voyage_ might as well have been _Emmanuelle_, the way they would make Harry's cheeks flush, make his eyes starry and bright, and fill his entire being with distant longing for more: for discovery, for adventure, for sights beyond his little town or planet or even galaxy. The universe itself was so unthinkably, immeasurably vast, and watching _Cosmos_ made it so clear to Harry that he was a part of it all, living in it, rejoicing in its utterly incredible greatness, and taking it all in with every breath in his lungs, with every thought in his consciousness, with every fiber of his being.

Snape's dusty VCR swallows Harry's rented tape with a hungry gulp. They settle on the couch in front of the TV set, and Harry hunts and pecks buttons across two different remote controls until he finds the right combination to bring up the bright blue warning screen. When Harry sneaks a glance at Snape's face, lit by that eerie light, he's strongly reminded of the movie's cover: a gaunt Vulcan face, in vivid blues against a black backdrop of space. Like _Cosmos_. Like the blackness of this room: lights turned off to make the TV glow like the movie theater's screen.

_Spock! _

_Yeah, so very, very Spock, _Harry thinks. The blue light has washed out Snape's skin, transforming the usual sallow tan to a strangely suitable greenish pallor; and Snape's beaky nose, harsh cheekbones, straight black hair, arched eyebrows and intent dark eyes all look pure Vulcan. That sight, that thought, makes Harry want things, so many things: to run his fingers through Snape's long hair, to lift those black strands and take a peek to see if maybe, just maybe, Snape's ears have Vulcan points.

"What?" Snape glances sidelong at Harry, as if he's finally sensed that he's being watched.

"Nothing. S'just..." After a long second, Harry breaks their joined gaze and looks down. "You look like someone I really, really like."

"And who would that be?" Snape arches an eyebrow, and even that familiar, tacitly teasing expression suddenly strikes Harry as Vulcan.

Harry gulps then grins, wide as a kid who's just been allowed to stay up late and watch TV past his bedtime. "Just keep watching."

Harry knows it isn't appropriate or fair to think about… about _liking _Snape. _Not when he's a preacher. A very straight, proper preacher, who isn't interested in doing anything more with me than seeing a movie. _

_Pity._

At least Harry's used to settling for what other people will let him have. Snape has managed to persuade Harry to attend his sermons regularly with nothing but his words and his voice; the least Harry can do in return is try to convert Snape into a proper science fiction fan. _No one with a functioning TV and VCR to boot should ever miss out on Star Trek!_

* * *

Snape keeps his usual snarky comments moderately polite while the movie goes through the usual routine of transparent-peril-overcome-in-inevitable-triumph. By the end of the movie it's obvious which character Harry had compared Snape to in his mind; though the earlier parts had been distinctly offputting, with a teenaged version of the character indulging in fortunately-mist-shrouded carnal activities with a female stranger. Snape indulges himself in turn, allowing his snippiness far freer rein during that scene than in the rest of the film. It's worthwhile just to watch Harry squirm.

Harry isn't squirming now. By the end of the movie Harry's curled up on his end of the couch, drowsy eyes almost closed behind his glasses. Snape sidles stealthily off the couch and comes back with an armful of sheets and a pillow. The darkness and quiet is broken only by the dim glow of the screen and the hisswhisper of rewinding tape, as Snape nudges the dozing boy's foot with his own. "Come on, you'll get a crick in your neck if you sleep like that."

Harry mumbles and grumbles as he gets to his feet, but it's all purely for form's sake: he helps Snape make up the couch obligingly. Then he strips out of his shirt. Snape swallows and turns his back as soon as Harry starts on the buttons, and doesn't relent until he hears the rustle of sheets being turned down. He turns back late enough that he barely glimpses a shirtless back as Harry lies down and rolls himself into the sheets.

The tape stops rewinding with a sudden hiss_click_ and is silenced as one bare arm slides out from the sheets to reach and press eject on the remote control. The TV goes dark and so does the room.

In the scant light from the kitchen, Snape stands for a long, silent moment, looking down at Harry as he snuggles his face into Snape's lumpy pillow, smiling as if it's the finest featherdown. Without those everpresent glasses his face seems younger, more vulnerable. Snape had never noticed his eyelashes before: with his eyes closed they are strikingly long.

The movie was forgettable, but the brat curled up on Snape's couch is anything but.

"Pleasant dreams," Snape murmurs.

Harry "mmm"s and his soft smile widens slightly.

However Harry sleeps, Snape's own dreams turn out to be unusually pleasant that night.

He awakes at four and gets up to get a glass of water from the kitchen. In the morning haze, he glimpses a sleeping figure sprawled on his couch. Harry had kicked off his sheet and is hugging the pillow to his chest. Before he stops himself from looking, Snape realises that he now knows exactly how many fingerwidths of pale skin spans across Harry's thigh, from the visible tanline right above his bent knee to the cotton edge of his underwear.

Forbidden fruit might as well taste like salt. "_God, grant me serenity…_" Snape bites the inside of his cheek and turns away.

_No sense in going back to bed now._

Once in the shower, Snape turns the knob all the way to the right, and waits for the summer-lukewarm water to run cold before he steps into the punishing stream and hopes it will cool him down, in all possible senses.

* * *

Harry wakes up to the sound of the running shower. 'Pleasant dreams,' Snape told him before he slept, and Snape's deep, personal whisper, far more personal than a prayer, followed Harry into deep sleep like a lullaby. Like a mantra.

Harry's imagination doesn't need much to be allowed to run wild. He pictures Snape leaning in much closer, and whispering those words right against his ear, right into it. So close that Snape's breath warms his earlobe and moves the strands of his hair. So close that it brings out the burning in Harry's cheeks and sends hot blood rushing down his groin. And the words of personal confession Snape could reveal to Harry would be far more sinful and tempting, damning and devious.

Simple words they would be, scattering like broken prayer beads deep into Harry's mind, strung into sentences frantic and forward: telling of deep human need, of desire, and each word would burn on Harry's skin like a physical touch of lips. That's what Harry wants. Exactly that, from Snape: to watch a human side of him exposed, every inch of skin and every word of admission.

Pleasant, so very pleasant, each word would sound, and none of it would be a dream.

Harry breathes deep and draws the sheets over his groin. _Stop it!_ he urges himself desperately. _I can't take care of it here! Last thing I want is for him to see anything. It'd be just too awkward to explain._

But we always crave what we can't have, despite embarrassment or awkwardness.

The click of the water shutting off and the resulting silence jolts Harry from his morning daydreams.

_That was quick. If it was me, there'd be no time for barely… anything. _

_Does Snape ever masturbate? That's the big question right there, isn't it? As big and as hard as it gets._

… _so to speak._

Harry grins impishly, relishing that thought for a moment, then he "Argh!"s and rolls over to bury his face in his pillow, hopefully hiding every bit of the flush he can feel burning in his face. Only in that feathery cotton-clean safety, can he explore the thought further.

_Gah, do preachers even do that? Maybe not. Maybe they give it up completely for Lent. Maybe it's just allowed on certain days. Like on a Sunday. Or every day that's not a Sunday. Or not at all._

_What does the Bible say about it? There was something about that poor married guy, Onan, 'spilling his seed' in the ground... So maybe it's a bad thing, like sin, but not a mortal sin. At least I hope not: Snape's a man, not a saint, so he's got to do something. Somewhere. Somehow. Otherwise no one in their right mind would ever become a preacher._

_Is it even allowed like that or does he get in trouble for it and has to apologise afterwards? But who'd he apologise to? To his boss? _

_To God? _

_Ha, hypothetically, besides God, who'd know? And I bet lots of things are OK if no one knows. That's how most Biblical instructions tend to go, anyway, 'OK if no one knows.' It might as well be the eleventh commandment._

Harry suspects that line of reasoning is unfair, but he has to admit there's a certain fairness too, in the way that it allows far more freedom than the alternative. _What else is Snape up to that no one knows about? Probably all sorts of delicious deeds. The Bible tells people _not_ to do all sorts of them, over and over and over again._

The Bible is anything but fair, but, to be fair, Harry doesn't know of any other religion that's any fairer.

_Argh. Enough of that, he's coming out._

Harry's pulling the sheets off the couch and folding them; he looks up as the bathroom door opens. "Good morning," he beams and Snape nods in reply as he leaves the bathroom. He's clean shaven, his hair wet and slicked back, but otherwise he's every bit as buttoned up from head to toe in black, as he is any other hour of the day.

Though he's just as much of a mystery as he was yesterday to Harry, at least one thing about him is settled: the tips of Snape's ears _are_ round. _About as human as ears get._ For some reason the discovery of a perfectly ordinary curve of a single ear is as stunning to Harry as if it had turned out otherwise.


	5. Tobias

_"Remember: if you see something, say nothing, and drink to forget."_

_-Welcome to Night Vale_

* * *

**Tobias**

* * *

On Saturday, Snape gets out a bag of sugar, a carton of eggs and another of milk, and carries it all out to the car.

"Need help?" beams Harry, rounding the corner. Never far behind. "I can carry stuff."

Snape shoves the whole lot at the overly-helpful brat and grumbles "Hurry up," as he unlocks the car. _I suppose it's that time of the month. Again. My penance for the sins of mankind, past and future. It'll only be harder if I delay it. Time to face the beast._

Snape drives ten miles south through corn fields, raising dust from the gravel road that billows in white clouds almost as high as a hurricane in the flat landscape. Across a creaky wooden bridge and crooked path, he turns off into a dirt driveway surrounded by overgrown elms. To the left lies a flowerbed of something dubiously weedy. To the right is a river-rock labyrinth; its neatly laid stones are bleached by the weather, large enough not to be overgrown by the prairie grass. Still just the same as they were all those summers ago, when Snape had wandered their meandering ways with a young boy's clumsy feet.

"Where were we going?" Harry asks behind his back. "Oh, what's over here?" Snape follows the direction of Harry's gaze.

Just over that hill is where the trailer park used to be, but now it's long gone, taken over years ago by far more mundane things than childhood dreams. Gone are the twin rubber tires hanging from gnarled oak branches. The old oak is no longer there, and neither is the park. It's a dusted-over dump of crumbling car carcasses and the rusty ribs of farm equipment rising from the cracked asphalt. The makeshift playground, and the red-haired girl of Severus' childhood exists now only in his memory. _As we swung higher and higher together, there wasn't a cloud in sight, and Lily told me in a breathless whisper that she thought she could fly. I believed every word. How could I not? She was my friend and she never, ever lied to me._

"Nothing worth asking questions about," Snape sighs. "This way, Harry."

"Huh!" Harry peers dubiously at the shack Snape is striding towards. "Does anyone actually live-"

Snape knocks. At the disturbance, a little more of the peeling paint flakes away from the door.

"Mother?" Snape calls.

"Did you mean -" Harry says. "- as in, your _mom_?"

_What did he think? That I just __**grew**__. In a dank corner of the church, like a mushroom? _Snape fires a quelling glare over his shoulder, but luckily the tell-tale reply of "Severus?" from inside cuts in before he can voice his irritation at Harry's surprise.

"Come in, come in!" the same voice adds, growing louder with the faint sound of footsteps from within.

_Of all the days for her to stay home… she just had to pick today. _Severus pushes the cabin door open and shows Harry through.

"You're late!" Her sharp, scolding tone shifts abruptly to oily interest, "...ohh, and _what_ do we have here?"

Harry beams and bounds forward to introduce himself with all the eagerness of a young lamb unaware of the slaughterhouse. Mother's sudden smile practically _oozes_ smugness at the spectacle. "Ssuch a helpful young gentleman. What a rare treat. Hell-lo, handsome, you look so good I could just eat you up!"

"Hi," Harry gulps, trying to look friendly. "Er, Mrs. Snape?"

"_Please_. It's Prince; I've gone back to my maiden name. After all, my _dear _husband's been gone for years and years, and these parts could do with some royalty. But enough about me. Tell me about you. Harry, is it?" Eileen reaches for the pitcher of lemonade sitting on her table and Snape is sure that somehow she can see into his mind, right into the memory of another drink dripping down Harry's sweaty, heated skin. "Here, have a glass to cool you down," she purrs. "You too, Severus. Our guest's tales will be far too interesting to pass up. So," she fixes Harry with an avid stare, "what could _possibly_ persuade you to help a stiff, dour old church dweller like my son?"

"Um," Harry scratches his head and takes the first sip of a golden liquid. "S'good. Thanks! And er, m'not sure myself, ma'am." His grin is bright and contagious. "I guess it's his charm. Must run in the family."

"I like this one," Mother smirks conspiratorially, "Smart _and_ easy on the eyes. You should keep him."

Snape groans. _It was a mistake, a big mistake, to unleash her on this unsuspecting innocent. She's eaten lesser brats for breakfast._ "Easy, Mother. There best not be anything fermented in that pitcher. He's hardly of drinking age."

"Tsk. Just lemonade and love, Severus." Mother's wolfish grin is as honest as a used car salesman waiting to descend on an unsuspecting buyer. "Don't you trust me?"

_Certainly not, _Snape conveys with a silent glower, eyeing his mother down his nose. _I know you, _he adds as he folds his arms forbiddingly._ If I thought you were old enough to know better, I wouldn't be living ten miles away, keeping a close eye on you month after month. _

He breaks the stare only when her shrug shows he's made his point. Only then does he glance aside at Harry, to find him watching their byplay with open fascination. It's all Snape can do not to facepalm. _It's too bad that the obnoxious teenage attraction for brainless horror shows and poisonous junk already has Harry falling into her trap, hook, line and sinker. How does she do it? Can't be only through copious quantities of questionable garden herbs and stale Mountain Dew in that lemonade pitcher._

_I'm still too young to know. Or possibly too old to understand._

* * *

Snape's mom is far too interesting; Harry can't help but compare them. Their noses, their eyes. Their voices. Even the cautiously hidden ears covered by greasy hair. Though Snape's mom's wiry hair is streaked with silver all over and Snape's isn't yet.

She's definitely not like Spock though. Not at all. Too full of smiles and dry chuckles and teasing and searching glances that are far too disturbing to be merely curious, and her questions are all prying and bitey, but not enough to make Harry worry. _Maybe it's just her way. Most old folks are chatty and nosy. It's just 'cause they're lonely._

Harry waters her poinsettia, her ivy, her catnip and thyme, and then another cluster of hanging plants he can't quite identify, dragging a metal watering can heavy with well water from one window sill to another. He's under strict instructions not to use tap water. Apparently the 'chlorine-n-Kryptonite-and-Cleopatra-knows-what-el se' cocktail brewed up by the local water tower is 'only good for adding flammable heads to Kool-Aid.' (She chuckles, rattles a box of matches, and promises to teach him that trick later.)

Her lemonade is sour and icy and sharp as her stare. Every word that comes out of her thin, smirking mouth is either questionable or a joke or usually both. But that beetle-black gaze doesn't miss much. That, Harry decides after long thought, is where Ms. Prince resembles her son most of all.

* * *

"What have you been up to since last time?" Snape asks her pointedly, after Harry, helpful as always, agrees to fetch more water for her outdoor plants from the garden well. A tabby cat curls up in the hanging planter outside, right around the leafy spider plant, as nonchalant as ever about the prospect of being watered by mistake, twitching tail tip poised in a curl above the cattail reeds.

"Severus, you should take care of yourself! Look at you, all skin and bone…"

"Save it." Severus eyes the locked door to the cellar staircase. "What's in the cellar this time?"

"Seriously, have you emerged from your church for a day? It wouldn't hurt you to…"

"What's in the cellar, Mother?" Snape is not about to try to rescue his Dear Old Grey-haired Mother from the consequences of her own pharmaceutical… experiments, any more than he would attempt to drink her under the table.

"Nothing! Not a thing. Seriously, Severus, it's nothing the state troopers, those lovely, vigorous young men, would fret over," Eileen fires right back with a cackle. "And they _are_ lovely this year. Such fresh meat," she purrs, as her gaze drifts over to track Harry.

"Mother…" Severus reaches for the deadbolt. He's hardly happy at the prospect of more cleanup: either of yet another 'chemistry lab', or if not that, of the resulting legal troubles.

Eileen steps between him and the door. "Oh, let me have at least a little fun. You'd get in far more trouble than I ever would, testing the sodomy laws with your young and impressionable… what is he by the way? Hm. Doesn't look much older than a freshman."

"Mother!" Snape growls.

"What? Dear me, did I say something completely inappropriate in front of a priest? 'Sodomy'. You must know the word, if you read that book of yours as faithfully as you think you do. The state troopers, toothfairy godmother bless their thick skulls, will enforce every paragraph and footnote of our fine law, I'm sure. How does it feel to have _all_ your books stacked against you?"

"You wouldn't recognize a 'fine law' if it sat on your nose and shimmied. And for your information," Snape hisses in an undertone, "he's seventeen!"

_Only seventeen. _The stab of guilt is as thorny and persistent as his mother's insinuations.

"Really? Tsk, what a pity." Eileen shrugs. "A bit too old for a choir boy."

"The church choir," Snape replies in gritted tones that - judging by the smirk on his mother's face - don't have a scrap of effect, "is open and available to everyone who demonstrates the shred of ability to carry a tune. I doubt Harry would make the cut." Unfortunately, Harry outsinging the shower yesterday morning in complete and utter butchering of the Beatles doesn't count as 'shred of ability' one bit, even if Snape does generously round up Harry's odds to a two-in-five chance of hitting the right note.

"I'm sure you'll find _some_ use for him. A bright young thing like that, so _eager_ to be impressed with your knowledge of scripture. How does it go? 'Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me'?"

Snape draws a deep, calming breath. "It must be a special sort of skill, to take a source of strength and inspiration and twist it inside out, all for the sake of sinking deeper in that mental gutter of yours." Mother's jokes were actually funny when Severus was six: they were rare then, but far more bitter, with Father around. Now, they are tolerable on a good day. "By the way, you can stop fighting now," he adds acidly, "The war's over. Just in case you didn't get the memo, I graduated from Seminary, whether you like it or not."

"Hmph, and how is that working out for you?"

"Just fine," Snape intones.

"'Just fine'!" she mocks, with a stiff upper lip. "A fine mess! Upstanding citizen, prim and proper with a church of your very own, not a man to speak against you with God on your side. Psh. At least I don't pretend that a crucifix on the wall solves all my problems."

"Careful, Mother. You could be hosting the police instead of me. And they won't be nearly as forgiving of your cellar experiments."

"Want to test that theory? I'm sure your entire Sunday flock would just love to see me in the papers!"

Harry calls from the yard, "All done, Mrs. Prince." A tousled head pokes in the door. "Papers? What would they write about?"

Eileen breaks out in crowing laughter, too raucous to be genuine. "Never you mind, dear. Just ignore an old hag's ramblings: Severus always does. Until his own stubbornness comes up sooner or later, to bite him in his pale, bony ass." For good measure, a light smack lands on Severus' side. "Check him for bite marks sometime for me, boy. Someone ought to."

Never before has Severus wished his mother away so thoroughly or desperately.

* * *

They don't leave until nightfall. Mother has taken too much of a liking to Harry, like a spider with an especially juicy fly. She is positively salivating at the prospect of asking him just one more question. It must be comic books, or possibly movies. Either way, it's fine by him: with a mother who, he's convinced, can cause a crack in the church steeple just by stepping under it, Snape isn't looking forward to another spiritual debate at the dinner table.

So far the discussion seems to swings toward the key argument of who'd win in a wrestling match: Cthulhu or Godzilla. His mother is far too amused by Harry's description of either, and Snape's pointed stare does nothing to distract her from her slyly prying remarks. However, most of her insinuations of suitors or sodomites drift past Harry's ears like cigarette smoke, and for that Snape is thankful.

The screen door lets in the evening breeze, as warm and humid as a breath. The cat, Minerva, Minnie for short, has also been let in. She stretches up, hooks her front paws carefully over the edge of the rickety wooden table, and strops her claws. The methodical scratch-scratch doesn't disturb the Tarot deck spread out in a configuration Snape recognizes as a very standard Celtic Cross reading. Apparently Mother's had a client today: not a regular, not someone she feels obliged to go to an effort to impress. The smoke of Eileen's cigarette curls its meandering gray tentacles up to the kitchen ceiling, where braids of garlic and wilted bundles of sage hang drying above the stove.

It smells more of plain tobacco in her kitchen than Severus ever remembered before. Severus doesn't miss his childhood one bit, but even he has to admit that the occasional company of his mother's nosy, dubious circle of friends and the natural solitude has been better for her than

Father's company ever was.

It's not as if his mother has mellowed out, even if she doesn't feel the need anymore for help from hemp. _The produce from Lovegoods' All-Organic Onion Farm a mile south causes fewer tears than anything she's ever cooked up, literally or metaphorically. Which is quite the achievement, since the Lovegoods' fertilizer supply comes solely from free range llamas and a wind-powered compost tumbler. Or so they claim._

Just like everyone else in Pleasant Hope, Snape has long learned to take the Lovegoods with a grain of salt and patience for conspiracy theories._ Any Luna Lovegood Conspiracy Theory op-ed in the Sunday paper is about as reliable as your average flying saucer sighting, and about as welcome as an alien anal probe. _

Speaking of unwelcome probing, how ironic is it that Mother has snatched up this innocent into her web. There'll be questions later, no doubt.

Before they part, Eileen shakes Harry's hand, leans over and breathes a word in his ear with a suspicious smirk. Snape doesn't have to wait long to find out what she's up to.

"Huh?" Harry asks back, nowhere near as stealthy. "Tobias, what?"

"His middle name," Mother grins, ever so smug. "Use it well."

Snape cringes, unclenches his fists, and reminds himself yet again that matricide is a deadly sin.


	6. Song of Songs

_"We understand the lights. We understand the lights above the Arby's. We understand so much… but the sky behind those lights - mostly void, partially stars - that sky reminds us we don't understand even more."_

_- Welcome to Night Vale_

* * *

**Song of Songs**

* * *

The road back home is dark and quiet, over the rattling wooden bridge and across the cornfields.

"So…," Harry drawls, sly amusement spicing his voice. "Severus Tobias."

"Don't," Snape growls forbiddingly.

"What? S'got a nice ring to it. Did she used to call you that when you were in trouble?"

"Tobias was my father's name," Snape snaps. The only other thing he cares to say on that topic is, "I'd rather not talk about him."

"Oh."

"He's the last thing either my mother or I want to talk about," Snape declares, as flat and hard and cold as the slab of stone covering a tomb.

Harry sighs. It's not aggrieved or irritable, it's a soft, commiserating sound. After a long pause, he replies quietly, "I never knew my dad. At least I don't remember him. I know where Mom is now, but Dad… nothing. Sometimes I used to wonder… if he's still alive somewhere, out in the world, looking for me. He'd be a real true hero, like a firefighter or a pilot, and he'd come and rescue me from my aunt and uncle and then we'd both go on all these magical adventures together and never ever return to the farm. Silly, huh?"

Snape keeps his hands on the wheel, positioned perfectly at 10 and 2 o'clock. _I used to hope that Lily would come back for me… Hope is a beautiful, terrible thing to have._

_Looks like I'm not the only fool to hold onto lost hope._ Snape recalls the day when he stopped for a familiar hitchhiker on the road out of town. _In the end, I was the one to pick him off that highway to Brighton. I hope he isn't imagining me as some sort of savior…_

Snape glances aside at Harry. The glittering green gaze that meets him is trusting and admiring and full of something he can't quite explain, much less justify encouraging further. _I should really stop this. _But what comes out of his mouth is: "Harry."

It obviously doesn't work as a discouragement. Harry's whole face lights up at his name being spoken.

"You don't have to wait for anyone to save you from your troubles. We are all capable of saving ourselves. Just like you did."

"Hm. Guess so," Harry's voice is quiet, pensive.

As they round a curve, descending into a grassy hollow, Harry cries suddenly, "Hey, stop the car!" Snape slams the brakes. Harry's hand is warm and sudden over Snape's wrist as Snape puts the gears into neutral. A second of warmth, and then Harry lifts his hand and points off to one side. "Look, over there!"

"What?" Snape is still searching for deer in the headlights, until it belatedly occurs to him that the alarm in Harry's voice is not alarm at all, but excitement.

"Fireflies!"

Sure enough, under the starry sky, sparks of acid green kindle and flicker, moving low to the ground in slow and majestic drifts, like the surge and ebb of the sea.

_Fireflies._

Snape calms his breathing, pulls the car over into the ditch beside the open field, and switches off the headlights. Above them spreads a sea of stars dawning against the fading blush of sunset, and below them lies a field of grass, alight with the twinkle of living stars, such a bright, neon green: as bright as the glow-in-the-dark dials on the dashboard of his car. As startlingly unexpected as the flash of Harry's full stare from behind his glasses.

"Aren't they breathtaking?"

Harry's excited gaze is so vivid, so honest. It is, indeed, breathtaking. "Yes, nature can be," Snape echoes, neutrally.

Harry grins. "They're like living, breathing constellations, but you can catch them just by running after them and reaching up. Ever caught one before?"

_Seems we'll be staying here for a while. _Snape shuts off the engine and rolls the windows down, risking a mosquito attack. "I can't say I've ever tried."

"Good," Harry declares, with conviction.

"Good?" Snape waves off an imaginary gnat, if only for show. The air is surprisingly clear around here.

"Yeah, beauty like that ought to fly free." Harry beams, unselfconscious and bright. "It's great to see it though, with the right person."

Snape watches the firefly-lit field, and the stars reflecting in Harry's lenses. The rustle of the wind through the grass is like the low murmur-and-hiss of the radio between stations. Like the whisper of waves on sand, hundreds of miles away.

_He'll fly free, soon enough, _Snape thinks._ I've only delayed him. He'll leave Pleasant Hope like his mother did, and just like her, he'll never return._

_I can only be happy for him. Everyone who thinks life is worth truly __**living **__takes the road out of town, sooner or later. Harry almost left already. I can only hold him here for so long. But I'm thankful for all the time I can get, together with him, before he leaves._

They stay sharing the silence as the moon rises, huge and luminous and golden over the hilltop. The scent of grass and earth is even stronger than usual in the damp night air. Fog fills pockets of low-lying ground until they look like moonlit ponds, and all the humidity makes Snape's ears pop as if he's underwater, makes his head swim as if he's floating.

"Did you ever… um. Can I..."

_You can ask, _Snape thinks. _I may not answer._

But Harry doesn't say another word.

_This isn't floating_, Snape realizes suddenly, _this is drowning._ His thoughts are so distorted and slowed down, as Harry leans in, toward him in the dark, resting his hand on Snape's hand as Snape's hand still clutches the gear stick, and he's still sinking deeper and deeper in. He can feel it. Harry's face is as close to him as Snape's own shoulder, and for some reason Snape keeps gazing at their reflections in the windshield, glowing firefly-green and strange in the light of the dials. As he stares he feels oddly detached, as if all this is happening not to him, but to a mirror reflection of him in some alternative, twisted, glorious universe in which he deserves absolution; as Harry leans in even closer and his breath warms Severus' cheek, his lips touch Severus' jaw.

_I mustn't give into this. I must speak to him. I must stop this at once._ In silence, Snape turns, but Harry's here, right here. With him. Because that's where Harry wants to be.

Or does he? Snape has to make sure. Carefully, softly, he reaches for Harry's glasses and pulls them off. He's had enough reflections. He needs the truth.

Harry turns, catches Snape's wrist, presses his mouth against Severus' palm, in something that can't be mistaken for gratitude anymore, as he leans into the touch. "Can I?" he repeats. "Is it OK? - Like this?"

Harry's irises are dark, so dark the green in his eyes comes only from caught neon-green flecks of light. His hands are over Snape's elbows. His voice is a bare whisper. He's babbling. It's endearing. Enticing. Unforgettable.

Snape lost his way in this warm green sea long ago. So he lets himself drown.

* * *

The slow and gentle caress of lips, the sharing of breath and touch that follows is truly a kiss of life.

* * *

The field and the flickering dance of fireflies is very special to Harry. One evening, when Harry had enough of the farm, of the Dursleys, he left everything behind and started walking. Everything, from the stars down, seemed so unreachable. He got as far as old Figg's field and was stopped by a vision, a swarm of fireflies descending like falling stars, flying within Harry's reach. He turned back and was home by morning, but that vision of wide open night fields lit by fireflies had stayed with him, vivid as ever, even years afterwards.

_There's magic in the world, if you know where to look for it. _

_Magic_. That's as close as Harry ever comes to believing in _something _outside of the mundane.

Today, as Snape drove them round the turn past the bridge, it was absolutely crucial for Harry to share that special moment of glimmering lights in the distance with someone. Not just with someone. With Snape.

The stars are amazing, with their supernovas and their bright giants and the superclusters of galaxies, up to one billion light-years wide! But the fireflies are even more amazing, because they are alive and right here under Harry's nose and within his reach: "_Lampyridae are a family of insects in the beetle order Coleoptera,_" says his biology textbook, and it sounds like a spell. "_Bioluminescence_!" he whispered to himself while reading that particular chapter. "_Larvae…. Glowworm…. The enzyme luciferase acts on the luciferin, in the presence of magnesium ions, ATP, and oxygen to produce light!_" Just saying that sort of thing aloud lights up the room, faster than a supernova.

And now, fireflies light up the world: brighter than the distant house lights from Pleasant Hope, and more unpredictable than falling stars, and he absolutely has to show them to Snape on a night like this! Grabbing Snape's hand is the first thing that comes to mind, and it's totally subconscious and he doesn't even realise it at first. It probably isn't the proper thing to do to someone who's driving, but nothing happens, just the steady hail of gravel being flung from the wheels, and then they stop, and the fireflies are all still there. And Snape is looking at them, really looking, through the windshield. And Harry knows he understands.

_He may be in charge of a church, but Snape understands all the important things. I know he does. We all need a reminder once in awhile: how small and fragile and beautiful and precious we all are among these unobservable galaxies of stardust and space, from the tiniest glowworm to the giant Galápagos tortoise, from a shifting grain of sand to the darkest stormcloud. _

All those things Harry tried hopelessly to explain to others ever since he was young: the simple revelation of taking reality moment by moment as it is, just _is_, not as it might be with the remote possibility of divine tampering.

"Did you ever…" Harry has no idea how to phrase it, doesn't know the words that could convey how beautiful every glimpse, every breath truly is to him right now, so he just asks, low and breathless, "Can I?"

Snape tilts his head, fixing Harry with an intent, inquiring look.

Harry does the only logical thing he can do: leans closer and sees stars in the darkness of Snape's eyes and it's pure concentrated magic, all in one person, and Harry believes in it with all his heart. He lets himself fall in. Snape's hands are on his glasses, taking them off. The inside of his wrist tastes of salt when Harry presses his mouth to it. _Like this, let me, please. _

"_Can_ _I_," Harry carries on and keeps falling, falling, until they kiss and it's frantic and awkward and wonderful, the way their breaths mingle and their lips meet. Harry climbs forward, over the seat and Snape reaches for something and lets his seat fall back a bit and there's a sigh, a groan, from him, from Snape, it doesn't matter, nothing else matters, as Harry lets his weight rest over Snape's shoulders and just lets the universe be, staying in that one perfect moment. Kissing Snape.

And then there are arms around him, big hands sliding up and down his back as Snape falls back and pulls Harry down with him and Harry's hands are in his hair, fingers tangling in long strands, holding his head still as the kiss turns hungrier, open mouths and their chests heaving against each other and it's warm, so warm, Harry can feel the heat in his skin and his head's spinning and he surfaces just enough to take a breath and their panting is so loud in the night.

He swallows, still panting. Licks his lips. It's dark in the car and he blinks and suddenly he wishes they were outside, out under the stars and the full moon because he wants to see Snape's expression, he wants to see his face and his body. He wants everything. "I need..."

"Husssh." One hand peels away from his back leaving a patch of chill, and then that hand lifts to his face and there's the gentlest possible brush of fingertips against his mouth. Harry's lips are strangely sensitive, kiss-swollen he realizes with a jolt, and he grabs Snape's wrist to keep his hand still, just as he'd clutched Snape's head, and he leans in to press slow deliberate kisses, every bit as gentle, to each fingertip in turn. His other hand is free to roam, to feel the hard chest under the dark shirt, and he can't quite believe still that he's got Snape here, right there. A magical moment, a magical place, and the man in his arms whom he trusts fully, unconditionally with a shared secret for two.

"...I know." Snape's voice is barely above a whisper, yet quiet as it is, Harry can hear a strange roughness in it, like a burr in its usual dark velvet. "Harry, I know." The hand that Harry's not holding brushes his mop of hair back from his brow, but when he leans in for another kiss that hand stays there, holding his head gently away.

Harry frowns; surely Snape can feel it, his fingers are still touching Harry's forehead. "Wha…"

Harry still can't see well, but he can hear Snape swallow. "Harry," and is that a note of sadness now, among that new huskiness? "We should…"

But whatever Snape was going to say is forgotten. Suddenly a stab of yellow light cuts through the night, eclipsing the stars and the fireflies, banishing the intimate darkness. The harsh blaze of headlights grows brighter and closer by the second, and the sudden crunch of tires on gravel and the growl of the engine shatters the quiet.

The car rolls to a halt beside them, and the engine goes quiet, though the headlights are still dazzling. Harry blinks the glare from his eyes until he can make out the car, and now it's his turn to gulp.

_It's the police._

Harry's halfway in his seat and it's probably a lost cause by now, but still he fumbles with a trembling hand and pulls at his seatbelt covertly, promptly buckling it with a click.

Just in case.

The car door opens. "Hold it right there. Explain yourself."

"Er," Harry sinks deeper into his seat. What are the odds of surviving a car chase with the police? Perhaps he and Snape should take off right now. Because anything - anything! - even a Thelma-and-Louise sort of ending is better than being questioned by Officer Moody. There's no cliff around here that's high enough to scare Harry worse than explaining to a cop what they're doing out here, or anything about what just took place between them.

"Hey, Moody, stop scaring the locals. At least wait until they actually start radio-transmitting spy signals to the Soviets on freshly cooked meth fumes before acting like you've caught them at it."

"Locals? Ha. Who'd drive all the way out here and why?"

"Didn't you recognize the plates? You're slipping, Moody. That's Reverend Snape, it is."

"Well, I'll be damned. Sorry, Reverend. Ahem. License and registration, please?"

"And that's Harry. He's been staying with Snape for the past month." Tonks beams. "'Sup Harry? How are you settling in?"

_Whew. _Harry feels his lips stretch in a grimace, hopefully friendly enough to pass as a smile, and croaks: "Tonks! When'd you come back?"

"A while ago. After I finished up at the academy. I guess it's true what they say, nobody ever leaves Pleasant Hope. Something about this town, eh, Harry?" She winks and pumps her fist in the air. "Go Pirates!"

Harry grins. Tonks was a cheerleader for the Pleasant Hope Pirates in high school when Harry was barely in Junior High, helping Ron's mom at the refreshment stand, serving popcorn and hot dogs and soda to older kids. He still remembers Tonks celebrating one of the few times they won a game. She'd put on a plastic purple eyepatch to match her Kool-Aid-stained purple hair, and had even scrawled a quick mustache in eyeliner across her upper lip. A proper Pirate. She ruffled his hair once with buttery fingers, as she picked up the last popcorn bag, and popped a new tape into the Walkman at her hip, like sliding a gun into a holster. "Don't you worry, kid, this year we'll beat the Spartans for sure."

The Spartans won the Homecoming game almost every year Harry was in school, but only because every single player on the team held a grudge against Pleasant Hope and wasn't above cheating to get their way. But Tonks never let that spoil her cheer. She was so, so cool.

Moody's got a real eyepatch and a real mustache, and Harry's quite sure that he's got a pipe somewhere too, with some acrid, bitter leaf tobacco like a seasoned sailor would have around. He looks more of a pirate than the Pirates logo painted up on the water tower, and that one's got a 'stache as thick as Harry's wrist.

Moody hmphs and sounds more like Uncle Vernon than any pirate ever ought to sound. "No parking lights, best get that fixed, Pastor. And get the boy inside. Not good for schoolkids to be out after dark."

Snape starts the car.

Tonks leans over toward the passenger window where Harry is trying not to tremble. "It's all for show," Tonks confides in an undertone to Harry. "He says the exact same thing to me whenever I ask to do the night shift alone." She winks at him and straightens up; he sees her wave in the passenger mirror. "Stay out of trouble, kiddo!"

_Easy for them to say when I'm already in more trouble than I can tell!_ _Bet neither of them ever kissed a preacher! _

Harry's heart skips a beat. _Sometimes trouble is necessary, especially when it steals your breath away and turns out so much better than you've ever dreamed of, and so worth the wait._


End file.
